Here are some takeaways from An Event Apart Seattle 2011:
A few stats:
- Smartphone growth is happening way faster than expected, outpaced PC sales in Q4 2010
- Feature phones (non-smartphones) don’t surf the web nearly as much – only 4% of feature phone users browse the web daily
- Mobile web is competitive with native apps – 25 sites visited per day vs 2.5 apps downloaded per month
How is the mobile web different from the desktop web?
- We can’t count on the user paying much attention
- Everything needs to pressed, swiped, or tapped with a big mushy fingertip
- Networks can be spotty or just bad, so the size of downloads needs to be very small
- We need to design and code differently due to device size, pixel density, and behavior
How is mobile not so different?
- People do things on the mobile they do on the web – fill out long forms, surf, buy products
- Webkit for Android and iOS is full-featured; HTML5, CSS3, and Ajax are all within reach
How do we create a web experience for smartphones?
- Don’t try to stretch the solution to fit feature phones and older smartphones – look to the future
- Detect capabilities (using WURFL or DeviceAtlas), serve up CSS & images tailored to different sizes & pixel densities
All this is how I summarized Luke Wroblewski‘s talks to folks at my company, and it sparked a good discussion. Be sure and check out Zeldman’s notes on the talks.